Standard Operating Procedures: Straight jacket or Lifeline?

You can divide most people into two categories when it comes to standard operating procedures: those who see them as a lifeline for effective operations  and those who see them as a negative force, a straight jacket constraining creativity and innovation. How do you achieve the positive results SOPs provide and turn around the negative perceptions?

When writing policies and procedures to standardize operations, it’s critical to understand the connection between Good People and Good Systems. Good systems support good performance and drive outcomes. They represent best practices and allow Good People to excel. Good systems eliminate waste and guesswork and free people up to perform at their best. Formal policies and standard operating procedures are simply the WAY you communicate good systems to good people.

The concept of systemization and standardizing operations is often massively misunderstood among people with a negative view of SOPs. Many managers think that systemization means “automation” and that it applies to machines not people. But that’s a major mistake that overlooks that the most important system component of all IS people. Human activity is the very core of any organization’s system of operations. Your organization’s real “system” is defined not by machines and technology but by

• the specific tasks individuals perform,

• the interaction and hand offs between groups,

• the flow of work and information,

• the policies and standards applied, and

• the divisions of responsibility, accountability, and authority.

While specific “functions” may often be automated, your organization’s actual system of work consists overwhelmingly of human activity. Standard operating procedures exist to help Good People perform better—NOT to tie their hands and shut down their minds. When writing policies and procedures, keep the bigger purpose in mind—you are trying to help good people get better results. This simple attitude shift will help guide you to develop more effective, user-friendly policies and procedures that people will view as a life line.

We’ll have more to say on this topic in future posts.

Through our Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software, COMPROSE helps our clients design SOPs and policy and procedure systems employees trust and use.

Source : https://www.comprose.com/standard-operating-procedures-straight-jacket-or-lifeline/

What’s the Right Level of Detail for Procedures and Work Instructions?

Two common mistakes people make when writing policies and procedures involve opposite sides of the same coin—Not enough detail or Too much detail.  Some policies and procedures fail because they are so vague and generic that people can’t use them.  Other policies and procedures are so long-winded and complex that people can’t follow or understand them.

If your goal is writing policies and procedures that get read and used, you need to find the right balance between conciseness and completeness. “Completeness” doesn’t have to do with how long the policy or procedure is. The best test for completeness is how usable the information is. Does the document contain enough information so the reader can perform the task safely and correctly—but no more than the task requires?

You can tell that you have included the right level of detail when the least experienced, trained user can safely perform the procedure as written without needing to ask questions.

To achieve this balance, writers should focus on the “Need to Know” information and leave out the “Nice to know” information. “Need to know” means just the information required to safely and efficiently perform the task.

So, what if one person’s “Nice to Know” information is another person’s “Need to Know” information? What do you do then?  You can get the best of all worlds and get the most value from your Operations Manuals, or Policy Manual by designing your content to provide DRILL DOWN access so each reader can access the level of detail he or she needs at a given time.

Operations Mapping techniques and Zavanta software are specifically designed to help you achieve the right level of detail in your content and allow easy drill down for maximum effectiveness.

Source: https://www.comprose.com/whats-right-level-detail-procedures-work-instructions/

4 Essential Tips for Ensuring Policy and Procedure Compliance

For over 30 years COMPROSE has worked with organizations across all industries — commercial banks, credit unions, hospitals, labs, government agencies, non-profits – just to name a few.  Although specific regulatory and certification requirements may differ, all industries share the pain of creating and managing policies and procedures required for regulatory compliance.

If you are outside the compliance world, you may be shocked to learn that many organizations have entire departments dedicated just to compliance. In these organizations a large chunk of budget and staff time is spent just on getting documents reviewed and approved.

No one WE know has ever said “Hooray, it’s time to review this year’s compliance policies and procedures!”

It may not be possible to transform policy and procedure compliance into something that’s on everyone’s “favorite to do list,” but there are steps you can take that will make the job easier and less painful.

Below are 4 proven tips that can help you tame the compliance monster and keep the regulators happy.

# 1. Focus on Quality Content.

If you’ve ever read any of our articles or blog posts, you already know that we truly believe that content quality trumps everything else. Unfortunately, content usability is something that’s difficult for many organizations to get right.

But the effort and focus on it is well worth it.

Employees who have access to clear policies and procedures perform better than those who don’t.

But here’s something most people don’t think about … Better content makes your Reviewers’ and Approvers’ lives easier too!

Why do most managers require constant nagging and put off reviews until the last minute?  Why do employees invent ways to “check off the box” on content they’ve never really read or understand?

If you’ve ever had to dive into a 100-page document that’s incomprehensible and unreadable, you know what we’re talking about. Are you clear on what you’re signing off on?

Better content makes auditors happy and bolsters their confidence in you. Audits are easier, less costly.

Even in a world with hundreds of document management products, slick looking websites and search engines, all this technology doesn’t do any good if people don’t understand the content itself or it takes forever to get through it.

#2. Make content accessible online on any device, but don’t forget paper.

The modern way to deliver policy and procedure content is through an engaging online experience, but don’t forget that some people may need or even PREFER paper. It’s important to keep your audience in mind. The system you use should enable you to easily deliver content in the way your audience wants it — WITHOUT all the pesky reformatting.

#3. Automate, but make sure the technology doesn’t get in the way.

Utilizing a single application that handles all phases of the policy and procedure life cycle is far superior than doing these tasks manually or cobbling together multiple systems.

Automation features such as review/approval workflows can significantly save everyone time and frustration, but make sure the technology doesn’t get in the way. Tools that require extensive set up time and complex procedures to operate often die on the vine because they don’t get used. We’ve seen companies waste thousands and millions of dollars this way.

Again, think about your audience. Is a high-level Executive going to be scared off by tons of features thrown at them?

#4. Avoid re-inventing the wheel for every new law or regulation that comes along. 

We see this all the time. Over time, policy and procedure content has been cobbled together and evolves in a haphazard manner.

So, when a new law or regulation comes along, the company reinvents the wheel, starts over.

Or, one area of the company has developed content that could be re-purposed, but no one in the other departments knows about it.

You get the picture.

Everyone does their own thing. Operating this way is wasteful, error-prone, and a sure-fire way to fail an audit.

Best practice is to utilize a single system and create an information architecture that is modular, easy to change. This is best done early, at the beginning. Think of your policies and procedures as a living, breathing “system”, not the old-style static documents or a one-off project.

If you practice this approach, your policy and procedure content can simply be tweaked and changed as the regulatory environment changes.

Source: https://www.comprose.com/4-essential-tips-ensuring-policy-procedure-compliance/

All You Need to Know About Knowledge Management Software

Knowledge management (KM) software supports and promotes an integrated approach to identify, capture, evaluate, retrieve, and share information assets, with a strong focus on how to complete that task. The various assets managed by knowledge management software are text documents, images, audio and video files, and other data types. Knowledge management is used to capture, distribute and effectively use knowledge to make an organization's data and information available to the members of the organization, and its partners and customers.

To get included in the Knowledge Management category, a product should qualify the following:

1. There should be provision to provide a preconfigured open environment for users to comment, share, and reference the supported file types.

2. It should allow history, tagging, and deep search within file names and metadata

3. It should provide integration through APIs to CRM, ECM, and DAM product

4. Proper integration with internal and external information/data repositor

5. It should include social features: tagging, liking, commenting, and rating

It should support the viewing of content for multiple file types

However, many challenges are associated with knowledge management, such as identifying information that meets the "valuable" criteria. Not all information can be classified as knowledge, nor can all knowledge be considered valuable.

People are much curious about what the knowledge management is all about? It is directly related to people's knowledge and how that knowledge can be used to support business and organizational goals? It is not based on technology, but the technology is used to support knowledge management drives.

The process of knowledge management is very much organized and goal-oriented and is directly linked to the strategic goals of the business. It employs knowledge that is relevant, meaningful and practical. Knowledge management is not static but ongoing, not the least because knowledge keeps on changing and needs to be updated, revised and sometimes done away with.

A business needs an application to create, manage and share business knowledge, or if it needs to manage its business intelligence more efficiently, then knowledge management software may be just the thing for that business. Although knowledge sharing is a relatively old concept, it is only now that it is becoming a formalized business practice. Knowledge Management Software assists the process of managing and propping up the storehouse of knowledge by accessing human and organizational capital.